While some are too strong for even El Reg to include in this story, we're pleased that Virgin doesn't just blush at the blue: it also nixes racist terms, and a few words (like “welcome” and “abc123”) that are simply stupid inclusions on any password.

And while we're forced to agree that “bollocks” is far too weak a word to use as a password, the code is clear that you can't even use bollocks within a password: if (password.match(/\s+/g,'')) then you'll get marked down.

We feel constrained to note that in 1977, a British court ruled that “bollocks” was not profane, as Richard Branson well knows. Here is his personal post from April this year, complaining that the company's internal email filters rendered an email that he had included the word “bollocks” as undeliverable:

Virgin “once won a court case that proved the word 'bollocks' was not rude or profane”, Branson points out (the famous "Never Mind the Bollocks, Here Comes the Sex Pistols" case), asking “Have you ever fell foul of an overzealous IT system?”. ®